The Raft of the Medusa: What Géricault's Painting Shows

The Raft of the Medusa shows the survivors of a real shipwreck, that of the French frigate Méduse in 1816, at the moment they spot a distant ship that might save them. Théodore Géricault painted it between 1818 and 1819 without any commission, showed it at the Paris Salon of 1819, and today it hangs in room 700 (Salle Mollien) of the Denon wing, level 1, at the Louvre Museum.

What does The Raft of the Medusa depict?

It depicts the most tense moment of the ordeal: a group of exhausted men on a makeshift raft sees a ship on the horizon. According to the Louvre’s own notice, the ship is sailing away, which turns the scene into a moment suspended between hope and despair. The bodies form a diagonal that rises from the dead in the foreground to the man waving a cloth at the top.

Géricault chose a news event, not an episode from ancient history or mythology. That choice, and the drama of the composition, break with the calm and order of the Neoclassical school: the painting belongs squarely to Romanticism.

What happened in the wreck of the Medusa?

The frigate Méduse ran aground on July 2, 1816, on a sandbank in the Bay of Arguin, near present-day Mauritania. These are the figures given by Spanish Wikipedia:

Fact	Detail
Date it ran aground	July 2, 1816
Location	Bay of Arguin, off present-day Mauritania
People on the raft	at least 146 men and one woman
Size of the raft	about 20 m long by 7 m wide
Days adrift	13
Rescue	July 17, 1816, by the ship Argus
Survivors when rescued	15 men

The raft was being towed by the boats, but the lines came loose and those on board were left to their fate. Over the next 13 days they suffered hunger, dehydration, madness and cannibalism. Nobody searched for them: the Argus found them by chance.

Why did the painting cause a scandal?

It caused a scandal because it pointed at a recent public disgrace. The captain, De Chaumareys, had barely sailed in 20 years and got the command through political favor, according to Spanish Wikipedia. For the monarchy restored after Napoleon’s final defeat, the wreck and the abandonment of the raft were a scandal, and a canvas almost 5 by 7 meters on the subject at the 1819 Salon was read as a criticism.

It also shocked through its rawness: corpses in the foreground and exhausted bodies instead of idealized heroes.

How big is The Raft of the Medusa?

It measures 4.91 m high by 7.16 m wide and is oil on canvas. Even so, it is not the largest painting in the museum: that title goes to Veronese’s The Wedding at Cana. The museum acquired it shortly after the death of Géricault, who died in 1824 at age 32.

Where is The Raft of the Medusa in the Louvre?

It is in room 700, the Salle Mollien, in the Denon wing, level 1. It is one of the “red rooms” devoted to large-scale 19th-century French painting, decorated in 1863 during Napoleon III’s expansion. Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, painted eleven years later and also Romantic, hangs in the same room.

The room is on the same level as the Mona Lisa, so it fits into any route through the main masterpieces. To plan your own route through the museum, see what to see at the Louvre. If you want a timed entry with a guided part, the skip-the-line ticket with a guided tour includes Liberty Leading the People, in this same room, in its program; it lasts 2 to 2.5 hours and costs $76.